Is there a specific machine you guys would recommend? I have no purpose for this thing other than as a research tool (aka toy to add to my collection). Cheap is also good. I was going to pick something up on ebay.

Well, as far as MIPS Machines go, SGI is the recommended one. I have a Cobalt RaQ2 that I managed to literally kludge Gentoo on overtop of a Debian installation, but an annoying issue with the tulip driver prohibits further work on that machine.

With SGI Machines, An Indy using any R4x00 Processor or R5000 processor works great. Indys are perhaps the most supported SGI Machine on Linux. With the Indigo2 machines, you have to be careful. SGI Made three different versions of those, IP22, IP26, & IP28. IP22 is the same (similar enough) design to the Indy series of machines and uses R4x00 (no production R5000 processor exists) processors. The other two designs, IP26 and IP28, are the R8000 and R10000 Processors, respectively. These do not run on Linux currently, and barring any suddenly help from SGI, likely never will.

Indigo2 machines are available generally in two colors: teal & purple. Any teal Indigo2 is more or less guaranteed to run Linux, since those were the early models that used R4x00 processors. The purple Indigo2's are what you have to be careful with. Some purple versions of the I2 comes with R4x00 processors, but others also come with R10000, and this can sometimes confuse people. The R8000 line, I am not sure what color they come in, however they are extremely rare, so it is very unlikely you will encounter one on eBay. The one R8000 I saw on eBay was teal, however, so who really knows.

There is a third line of SGI Machines as well, the Challenge series. The Challenge S and Challenge M are more or less mock-ups of the Indy and Indigo2, with some altercations. I know the Challenge S runs Linux, but I am not sure about the Challenge M. The Challenge L is different from the S and the M, and Last I heard, does not support linux.

Other SGI Machines, like the O2 and Origin, are "experimental". I know people who have or are running linux on such a machine, but in most cases, the Linux being run is not Gentoo, and the work being done is kernel hacking. The O2 w/ an R5000 processor will hopefully be considered "stable" enough to run Gentoo on in a few months, but only time will tell on that.

Beyond SGI, I don't really know. MIPS is one of those architectures that has many wide and varying uses. SGI Machines running linux is really the only area I have an understanding of. Hopefully I can get Gentoo to run in the RaQ2 in the future, but I have to find a workaround on the tulip issue first.

Hopefully that will give you an idea of what to look for and all. You can always stop in at #gentoo-mips for further info from people that may be alive in there.

I just bought one of each of the Indigos (teal and purple, in other words). They have pretty impressive pedigrees and are really quite nice machines, despite their age (200 and 250MHz, respectively). Some are still used to render the clouds in the weather sections of tv news.

IRIX is quite usable, full-featured, and fun, imho. Don't have to worry about hardware support, either Since I have full sets of IRIX software for them, I'll probably dual-boot (assuming I can get Linux to play well with them).

Indy's are also beautiful. I'm probably going to end up grabbing one of them too, simply because they're so nifty. http://www.obsolyte.org/ has great info on these machines (as well as NeXTs, Suns, etc).

I believe that my original point was something along the lines of "these computers are great fun, and buy one if you like. They're a lot more colorful than x86's, despite the lack of community support for them. They make totally great desktop machines, but I'd hesitate to make one into a 'museum piece.'"

Well, as far as MIPS Machines go, SGI is the recommended one. I have a Cobalt RaQ2 that I managed to literally kludge Gentoo on overtop of a Debian installation, but an annoying issue with the tulip driver prohibits further work on that machine.

With SGI Machines, An Indy using any R4x00 Processor or R5000 processor works great. Indys are perhaps the most supported SGI Machine on Linux. With the Indigo2 machines, you have to be careful. SGI Made three different versions of those, IP22, IP26, & IP28. IP22 is the same (similar enough) design to the Indy series of machines and uses R4x00 (no production R5000 processor exists) processors. The other two designs, IP26 and IP28, are the R8000 and R10000 Processors, respectively. These do not run on Linux currently, and barring any suddenly help from SGI, likely never will.

Forget the R8000 if you do find one, they're rare and will never run anything other than IRIX. They're also purple machines.

It's a fairly easy upgrade to the R10K, isn't it? Or am I mistaken? Pretty cheap, probably. Might take a bit, but I'm sure it can be done on eBay... they're the same processors as the ones that fit in the Onyx, but I'm not sure if they're interchangeable.

Purple's not too bad a color I thought about putting lingerie on my purple indigo, tho

A question: Not intended to be smartassed at all.
What's everyone's problem with IRIX? I know it has security holes, but I wasn't planning on having mine being a surfing machine. I know it's just UNIX, but it seems to have a pretty rich feature set. It's not nearly as versatile as Linux, but it seems very spiffy at what it does...

Just questions, since I have two Indigos and an Indy (putting Linux on the teal and possibly the Indy, btw). I'm accustomed to Linux prejudice vs. Slowaris and various other Unix derivatives, but I always thought IRIX was one of the better ones.

IRIX is SVr4 based, but with a lot of twists to it... It supports everything from 1 proc machines to 256 proc machines and beyond It works well for High Throughput i.e streaming media because you can regulate the speed of everything in the system from network interface all the way to the disk. It does what it was designed to do very well, but it doesn't make a very good internet facing OS, because of the security holes.

Forget the R8000 if you do find one, they're rare and will never run anything other than IRIX. They're also purple machines.

Actually, There was an R8000 75MHz Indigo2 up on eBay just last week. I really should have grabbed it, but I'm running out of room for all the machines I have. It was in a Teal case too.

It may be possible to support linux on the R8000, if SGI gave the legal nod. The lead linux-mips kernel guru, Ralf Baechle, apparently has a copy of the R8000 manual, but because he's unsure if it can be used legally, the manual has remained closed.

It's a fairly easy upgrade to the R10K, isn't it? Or am I mistaken? Pretty cheap, probably. Might take a bit, but I'm sure it can be done on eBay... they're the same processors as the ones that fit in the Onyx, but I'm not sure if they're interchangeable.

It is possible -- I've done it. I have an IP28 mainboard + R10K CPU sitting in the closet. It's a pain in the neck though to undo all the screws and swap the board out. Linux still doesn't run on them last time I checked. There is a microscopic possibility they might, though, due to some recent updates for IP32-R10K (SGI O2) that may have inadvertently fixed things for IP28 as well. But this is untested.

//--------

For those planning on putting linux (and/or gentoo) on an Indy or Indigo2, I've finally gotten the Gentoo/MIPS project page up at http://mips.gentoo.org/, for those interested. Feedback is welcome.

Actually, There was an R8000 75MHz Indigo2 up on eBay just last week. I really should have grabbed it, but I'm running out of room for all the machines I have. It was in a Teal case too.

I grabbed four R4400 100MHz Indigos off eBay, apparently in great shape except missing the drive-cover-swing-thingy. I'm also inheriting six 9.1GB and 10 18.2GB SCSI drives, so maybe I can get a couple new R4400's... or do R5K's fit in the same socket? I know little about the architecture.

So that'd mean 4 running Indigo2's Each has 64MB RAM right now, plus I have some laying around. If I can find and swap in a mobo, they might become 10K machines, but I think it's probably easier to find a 10K machine than just the mobo by itself

At any rate, I'll sell these machines at the cost of supplies + shipping to anyone interested. That's $15 (original cost) + $10 (9.1GB HD) + cpu cost (probably not much) + whatever. I'd throw in a 13W3 adaptor for anyone needing one. They come with a keyboard and mouse.

It'd come out to under $100 with shipping for a working Indigo2, hopefully at around 200MHz, but I haven't checked the R4.4K/R5K ranges of performance yet.

If anyone's interested, lemme know. This isn't a money-making opportunity, obviously, since I'm just selling them at cost...

I grabbed four R4400 100MHz Indigos off eBay, apparently in great shape except missing the drive-cover-swing-thingy. I'm also inheriting six 9.1GB and 10 18.2GB SCSI drives, so maybe I can get a couple new R4400's... or do R5K's fit in the same socket? I know little about the architecture.

The 100MHz R4400's will be a little on the slow side...Installing Gentoo on these will require patience. As for R5K's, no "production" R5K processors were ever made for Indigo2. Apparently, there may have been developer-only models, but they lacked the same power as the Indy R5K Processors.

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So that'd mean 4 running Indigo2's :-) Each has 64MB RAM right now, plus I have some laying around. If I can find and swap in a mobo, they might become 10K machines, but I think it's probably easier to find a 10K machine than just the mobo by itself :-P

64MB of ram may work for IRIX, but that's gonna push it for Linux, unless you're running a small debian install. Things like gcc are memory hogs that will quickly eat up that RAM.

As for R10K Mobos (IP28), they're not that difficult to find, but they have been scarce lately. I emailed an ebay seller once (I can't remember their name) to inquire about IP28 mainboards, and they said they'd post one on ebay later that night. I bought the mainboard for about $100, which I guess prompted the seller to auction off another 10+ mainboards (which sold for less than $60, go figure). That board is sitting in the closet now until Linux either works on them, or I find something else to do with it.

I wasn't thinking of Gentoo, particularly. I installed LFS on a 333MHz 32MB laptop and that was tear-jerking... I might do LFS and just use these for hobby machines (that's all they are, anyway -- I'm just selling them to get rid of them and hopefully recoup some of what I invested)... believe me, these aren't going to be desktop machines

Of course, it's not like I'm going to be sitting and staring at them like I was while installing LFS on my laptop (which died about three hours after the 55+ hour install, the bitch)... I have a bunch of other computers that I just bought, so I figure I'll be pretty busy installing Linux and configuring them, my network, etc... plus writing, so really I don't expect the install process to be all that painful. I have about eight other computers to dick around with...
and once I get one tweaked, I can image the drive and transfer it to the other computers, etc. Since I have a 250MHz R5K with 128MB RAM, I suppose I could just do the compilation on that (leaving out the R5K optimizations, etc) and image that. Logic says that'd be a lot faster than trying to struggle through compilation on a 100MHz 64MB machine.

... this could just turn out to be a failed experiment and a pain in the ass. I think I'm going about it with the right reasons, though. It's just a hobby, I'm learning more about Linux, diversifying, and adding a couple of machines to my flock for a relatively small cost. *shrugs* I'm not expecting to make them particularly productive, mind you...

I recently acquired an older SGI O2 with a 180MHz R5K with a 4.1 gig HD, 128 MB RAM. Anyone know where I can go to get linux that will run on this? I prefer Gentoo over anything else, but I'll take what I can get._________________Anything worth doing is worth over-doing. Moderation is for cowards.

Gentoo on the SGI O2 is a work in progress. On the R5000 systems, the kernel can boot somewhat, but you'd be considered extremely lucky to make it into multiuser mode. The R12000 versions are a tad more stable, but even if you got into multiuser, you wouldn't last long.

If you want to help stabilize O2, you might want to learn some kernel hacking, as that's where the core of the work is needed right now. A few months from now, it is possible the kernel will be relatively stable. Then the userland fun can begin.